Video playing, ad that scrolls, two lines of a story, the bottom popping up with notifications every few minutes over the top of more scrolling ads.
Yay internet.
Edit: Oh wow! Did not expect so many responses. First let me say, thank you for taking the time to read and respond! To address the biggest response to use Firefox I actually have it on my phone it’s just remembering to break the habit. This was more to show what an average user who just uses what they’re used to experiences on mobile browsing.
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People who don’t use ad blockers get a MUCH different experience. Especially on mobile. I made the decision to pony up the cash for an app called AdGuard years ago. It hosts its own VPN locally on your phone and filters traffic through it. The first time I learned how it worked I thought “Damn, that’s a really good idea!”
For those who don’t know you can also set a custom DNS on most phones now and have it block ads that way or my personal favorite and self host a network ad blocker like a pihole on an old PC and do it potentially for free.
But honestly the companies making it easy for people to adblock and asking for little money are so good and I deeply support them even if it means paying them cause it’s almost necessary in modern internet
Mobile is garbage. It is a barely controllable platform with horrible UI, horrible ways of doing things, touchscreen that is incredibly irritating to use, etc. I cannot understand how we, as a society, decided this would be our future. I get the idea of basic communication anywhere you go but internet? You can’t wait until you get home to do internet? You can’t download data and information to a more simple and usable device like we had back in the Palm Pilot days that came standard with a stylus and a sane way to enter data instead of jabbing at tiny squares with our fingertips? No idea how people actually use mobile devices as their primary computing device now. I have to have a real PC to do anything with and my only reason I have a smartphone is for talk/text (no mobile internet) and doing similar things to what I used a Palm Pilot back in the day for, offline data to have on the go for whatever purpose I need it for.
We need to go back.
Ok Grandpa
Ok kid.
Goes both ways, doesn’t it? Except my stance makes more sense because there are actual, undeniable issues with mobile devices and thay are demonstrably inferior devices in every single way. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can stop carrying around a tracking device that monitors every single thing that you do.
Actual, undeniable issues? Sure! However, and you may have heard this before, a tool is just a tool. Technology is neither good nor bad–it depends entirely upon how you use it.
Demonstrably inferior? This is simply and objectively untrue. They are not inferior in any ways whatsoever. How healthy they are, for the user, is not the only metric to consider. There is also the productivity side.
They make phone calls, they make texts, and then on top of the basics, you have access to much of mankind’s collective knowledge catalogued at your fingertips. Whether or not that knowledge is actually correct is a judgment call. Whether or not you use your phone for video games, YouTube shorts, TikTok, and porn, is up to the individual user, and is indicative of the lifestyle that they choose to live. It has nothing to do with the tool that was put in their hands, and much more to do with the morality of the companies that serve the content that provides them gratification–and the ability of the individual to resist temptation.
As for tracking, if you are reasonably educated about the technology that you use on a daily basis, it is easy to circumvent the tracking and spying that happens. An example of this would be Calyx OS. Yes, you’ll be putting in more maintenance, but do you do your own car repairs? Maybe it’s time to advocate for ourselves and make an industry of privacy conscious smartphones.
Addendum: As for mobile UI, yes, it sucks, and companies keep hiring terrible developers that use the wrong tools for the job. That’s what happens when you’re mostly focused on your bottom line and don’t want to pay for the skill that is actually required to make decent software.
it is easy to circumvent the tracking and spying that happens
The fact that using a cell phone for its intended purpose allows carriers (and by extension, the entities that make your phone) to precisely track wherever you are by cell triangulation – no GPS, no geolocation, no app spying, nothing, all in hardware – means that it’s impossible unless you just keep your phone in a Faraday cage and never actually use it.
You did get me there.
On the other hand, you can make identification difficult.
Use a root app that disables all network hardware while the device is locked, and randomize your MAC on public networks. Also use a carrier (if available) that purports to be ethical.
There are various issues with my statements: your SIM identifies you, there are ways to identify people across different networks even if their MAC is randomized, and even “ethical” carriers still use towers from other providers, which can of course triangulate your position.
That said though, if you take the proper precautions using a smart phone would be no worse than a flip phone.
That’s probably one reason why it became a habit to stay on Lemmy, often not even opening the article.
iOS reading mode is great for cutting out all that BS
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Yeah, and if you press the history back button to get away from that ad-ridden nonsense, they intercept that to “offer” more “articles” to “read” or better said they try to hold you hostage to serve even more ads to you. Should be illegal, but money.
Firefox Mobile has uBlock Origin that works on every site, even in incognito mode. Give it a try if this post pains you!
You can also use Fennec (Firefox) or Kiwi Browser (Chrome) forks for Android. Both support uBlock Origin.
IceRaven (based on Firefox) browser has some extra add-ons support than plain Firefox Mobile.
Even iOS and Samsung fucking browser gave ad blockers.
Chrome mobile is shit and purposefully so.
Use Brave Browser 🦁
A workaround I like is using the Reader View built into Safari on iOS – strips most junk out, leaving clean text
Firefox Mobile also has this
It’s really the only way sometimes.
Nice! Thanks for that info
AdGuard Pro on iOS is decent, but no where nearly as good as uBlock.
I’m actually surprised this hasn’t happened to streaming services yet.
Mobile internet is hot garbage.
So when shifting to firefox with ublock origin?
POV: you just opened a link someone posted on Lemmy via your mobile app.
Firefox + uBlock does wonders.
Also for cookie banners??
Yep, there’s an additional filter for those
Cool, TIL
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I think I might put that on a T-shirt. Ferchrissakes. The propensity for everyone to want to build a GD React SPA with gobs of unnecessary Javascript is so very rampant right now.
Let the backlash begin. Someone has got push back - the hegemony of Javascript frameworks as the Golden Hammer of the Internet has just got to end.
I remember when Spring came along and effectively put the end to baroque J2EE stuff; it seems that the frontend is long overdue for this type of revolution. Or at least stop inflicting this awful experience on the users…why do I need to keep upgrading my computers every few years, just to browse the freaking Internet? Why is Javascript necessary to read text? It’s ridiculous.
The front end ecosystem is a bit out of control, but the issue isn’t JavaScript. Nearly every site uses it and people don’t notice.
Business are making intentional design decisions that lead to what we see here.
It’s not Javascript per se, it’s the abuse of it that I take issue with. Also, there are plenty of places where it has no purpose that benefits the user and it would be quite possible to have many sites/pages that don’t require Javascript at all.
Actually it’s your fault for not using ad-block.
Technically you can blame a website, but this is the case with almost all of them. The whole internet is like this and you cannot do anything about it. At least not by yourself.
Instead, you should fix this for yourself:
- Use Firefox and install uBlock extension.
- Use ad-blocking DNS server.
How does that work when using sync and it opens the webpages for you?
On Android it opens using Firefox.
Set Firefox as your default browser
